DEVELOPING SHALE OIL MAY SOLVE OUR ENERGY CRISIS

July 29, 2009

The United States imports about 66 percent of its oil; yet, Congress has done little to remedy the situation. Instead, it has erected barriers to domestic energy production. Fortunately, the United States has vast quantities of oil in rocks, including oil shale, which can be converted into fuel. In fact, we have 75 percent of the world's oil shale, says H. Sterling Burnett, a senior fellow with the National Center for Policy Analysis.

Unfortunately, due to radical environmentalists' sway over key Democratic lawmakers, this oil is off-limits to production. But removing barriers would include auctioning public lands with oil shale for production and streamlining the permitting process, says Burnett:

Per acre, oil shale is significantly more concentrated than the oil and gas on Alaska's North Slope, Alberta's tar sand or ethanol production.

Indeed, some shale contains more than one million barrels of oil per acre.

By contrast, conventional oil fields yield about 10,000 barrels per acre, and Congress's preferred alternative to oil, ethanol from corn yields, contains the equivalent of 10 barrels per acre.